Looking for a job these days is more like looking for “Waldo” the outlandish, red and white hat wearing cartoon character from the cover of a 1980’s children’s book and cartoon called Where’s Waldo?. In both, your job was to find the main character Waldo amidst a page crammed pack with action. In some instances you’d get excited, believing that you’d found the proverbial “needle in the haystack” or shall I say “Waldo in the haystack”, only to lose that excitement when you discovered upon closer inspection that what you’d actually found wasn't Waldo but someone or something that mirrored his signature look.
For this generation maybe Waldo books and cartoon came out as an unlikely precursor for today’s job market. Searching for Waldo has been replaced with searching for a job and the odds of hearing the words “You’re hired” are just as elusive. The job market, unlike looking for Waldo does not guarantee success to the persistent. Instead they too find themselves in the same social services lines, food banks, and homeless shelters as those who were far less diligent. Unlike Waldo, the economy, is not a neatly packaged book or cartoon that guarantees success, no matter how persistent, educated, or diligent you are.
